Plumber in Newark, NJ

Newark's scale is its first plumbing fact. A city of more than 300,000 people, most of them in housing built before polyvinyl anything, runs on cast iron, galvanized steel and clay in combinations that vary block by block. The North Ward's Forest Hill Victorians carry one set of lessons; the Ironbound's brick density carries another; the post-war garden apartments of the South and West wards a third. The plumber who works Newark works a whole century of American building at once.

The city's second fact is its famous one: Newark's lead service line replacement programme became a national reference point, swapping thousands of lead lines for copper in a few years. Homeowners in the city learned to ask what their service line is made of — the right question, and one any work on an older Newark house should still begin with, because pockets of old material survive every programme.

Its third fact is water. The Passaic River bends around the city's east side, and the low ground along it — the Ironbound especially — knows flooding as a recurring character rather than a surprise. Basement defense, working sumps and drains that clear are not suburban concerns in Newark; they are the terms of the river's company, accepted by a city that has always lived by its water.